Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture

Modelling the Interaction Between Urban Sprawl and Agricultural Landscape Around Denizli City, Turkey

Urban sprawl is not merely a geographical expansion but also brings about a set of social
and spatial changes such as the loss of human nature in urban life, the distortion of natural agricultural
and archaeological landscapes and the transformation of natural landscapes into cultural landscapes. It
is an obvious and crystal-clear fact that such changes are hard to control in developing countries. This
study mainly aims at understanding the local scale variables leading the urban growth in Denizli, a city
having a trend of fast settlement and urbanization, and analyzing how these variables would affect the
way of urban growth in future. In this study, the spatial/positional variables on a local scale and the
growth forms belonging to the years of 1987, 2001, 2013 and 2015 were correlated by using the Logistic
Regression Analysis, and the urban growth in Denizli in 2025 was simulated. In the study, two models
were created as the control model and estimation model in order to reach the simulation of 2025. In the
control model, the urban growth belonging to 2015 was estimated by correlating the urban growth of
1987 and 2001 and an 80 % accuracy was attained for overlapping the outcomes of control model and
the real-time urban growth in 2015. The valid accuracy rate in the control model was simulated via the
estimation model (model 2) belonging to 2025. The primary aim should be taking control of construction
and the city should be accordingly established upon a new model. In this regard, when analyzing
the city models, it is thought that the model of a compact city is a sustainable model for Denizli.